Coindesk

Bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings (MARA) is launching a fresh $2 billion stock offering to buy more bitcoin, continuing its plan of buying BTC in the open market through capital raise while sticking to its "Hodl" strategy. According to a Form 8-K and a new prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), MARA entered into an at-the-market (ATM) equity program with a group of investment banks including Barclays, BMO Capital Markets, BTIG, Cantor Fitzgerald, and others. The proceeds of the offering, which will see brokers selling shares of the miner from time to time, will be used mainly for the acquisition of bitcoin in the open market. "We currently intend to use the net proceeds from...

FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange once helmed by Sam Bankman-Fried, plans to begin paying its main creditors at the end of May, Bloomberg reported based on court proceedings in Delaware this week.The company has gathered $11.4 billion in cash to distribute to thousands of parties affected by its 2022 bankruptcy, with the first payments to major creditors set for May 30.These include institutional investors and firms that held crypto on FTX’s platform. Smaller creditors with claims below the $50,000 mark have already begun receiving distributions.FTX’s collapse left a financial crater and a trail of frustrated creditors—many of whom expected to be repaid in crypto, not dollars. Since the bankruptcy, the price of bitcoin has more than quadrupled, intensifying frustrations among...

Cryptocurrency prices have experienced a sharp declune over the last few hours, with bitcoin (BTC) now being down around 3% over the last 24 hours, while major altcoins including XRP, BNB, and SOL are down between 4% and 5% over the same period.The broader cryptocurrency market, represented by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), lost around 3.3% of its value over the period. The sharp drop brings BTC’s performance down 1.7% for the week, while CD20 is down nearly 5%.Over the last 24 hours, over $300 million worth of long positions were liquidated on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, while $38.8 million worth of shorts were liquidated on these platforms, according to CoinGlass data.The drop appears to be part of a wider derisking...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped or paused over a dozen ongoing cases (and lost one) since U.S. President Donald Trump retook office just over two months ago and appointed Commissioner Mark Uyeda as acting chair.You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign up for future editions.One left?The narrativeThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appears to have closed almost all of its outstanding crypto-related cases — at least the publicly disclosed ones — in the last two months since Mark Uyeda took over as acting chair of the agency. In many of the court filings, the SEC argued that it needs to pull these cases while...

Hopes for the crypto recovery to continue vanished on Friday, as a market-wide rout erased virtually all gains from earlier this week.Bitcoin (BTC), hovering just below $88,000 a day ago, tumbled to $83,800 recently and is down 3.8% over the past 24 hours. The broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index declined 5.7%, with native cryptos Avalanche (AVAX), Polygon (POL), Near (NEAR), and Uniswap (UNI) all nursing almost 10% losses during the same period. Today's sell-off wiped out $115 billion of the total market value of cryptocurrencies, TradingView data shows.Ethereum's ether (ETH) declined over 6% to extend its downtrend against BTC, falling to its weakest relative price to the largest cryptocurrency since May 2020. Underscoring the bearish trend, spot ETH exchange-traded funds...